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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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The 

Qre/itest Work 



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Arthur T. Piersoh. 

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Works b£ IRew 2L Tk flMerson t H>*2n 



/IftattE ITnfalllble U>r00f6* The Evidences of 

Christianity ; or, The Written and Living Word 

of God. 12mo, 317 pp. cloth $1.00. Paper 

covers, net 35c. 

''Nothing: but good can be spoken of this volume. 
The author's personality pervades it and the studies and 
deepest experiences of his life are in it." — Golden Bute, 

Gbe Crisis of /ilMssione* 375 pp. cloth $1.25. 

Paper, 35c. 

11 We do not hesitate to say that this book is the most 
purposeful, earnest, and intelligent review of the mis- 
sion work and field which has ever been given to the 
church. ' " — Christia n Statesman. 



1bope t tbe Xast XLhim in tbe TIMorR), i2mo, 

32 pp. Chaste White Vellum-paper, 20c. 

This brochure has been prepared to complete the 
series of articles on "The Triple Graces," to which 
Prof. Drummond and Dr. A. J. Gordon are contributors, 
each aiming at the same central truth, but presenting 
views from different standpoints. 

Gbe Greatest WLoxk in tbe WorlD* The 

Evangelization of All People in the Present 
Century. 12mo, 64 pp. , leatherette, gilt top, 35c. 

The subject itself is an inspiration, but this latest pro- 
duction of Dr. Pierson thrills with the life which the 
Master Himself has imparted to it. It will be a welcome 
addition to missionary literature. 

New York. FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY. Chicago. 



THE GREATEST WORK IN THE 
WORLD. 



The Greatest Work 

in the World. 



OR 



The Evangelization of all Peoples 
in the Present Century. 



a? 
ARTHUR T.'PIERSON, 

Author of "Crisis of Missions," "Many Infallible 
Proofs," &c, &c. 



'?*tx W 



NEW YORK and CHICAGO. 

jflemino 1b. IRevell Company, 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature. 



\ • \V . 







"$%{£ 



Copyright, i8qi, 

— by — 

Fuming H. Revell Company. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



The Greatest Work in 
the World. 



THE supreme enterprise of the age is 
the immediate preaching of the Gos- 
pel to every creature. 
. . . When Francis Xavier stood before 

. . . the "Walled Kingdom," China, and 
felt the power of its adamantine exclusiveness 
and proud self-sufficiency, he exclaimed, " O, 
Rock ! Rock ! when wilt thou open to my Mas- 
ter ? " If that heroic Jesuit of Navarre, whose 
grave was made at Goa, in 1552, could, after 
these nearly three hundred and forty years, 
see not only that " Rock " opened to his Mas- 
ter, but the whole world flinging wide the 
long-shut doors ; and could he then see the 
comparative idleness and indifference of the 
disciples of Christ, who are so slow to enter 

(5) 



6 Oje Greatest XDor£ 

and possess the land, he would turn to the 
Church itself and again cry, " O Rock! Rock! 
When wilt thou open to my Master ! " 

The great question of the hour is, How 
can the immediate proclamation of the Gos- 
pel to every creature be made a fact? 
Other preliminary questions have been an- 
swered by the very movements of God's 
providence and the developments of human 
history. We need no longer to ask how we 
shall get access to the nations, for the bar- 
riers are down ; nor need we inquire how we 
are to reach these uttermost parts of the 
earth, for the steamship and steam car will 
bear us to the limits of the globe in less than 
two months ; nor need we search for the im- 
plements and instruments for the work of 
evangelization, for the printing-press offers 
to make the eye the handmaid of the ear, in 
the rapid dispersion of the gospel message, 
and science is really to be the powerful ally 
of faith in the conquest of the world for 
Christ. Nor is it a question of adequate 
force for the field, for the evangelical 
churches could furnish four hundred thou- 
sand missionaries, or one for every two thou- 
sand of the unevangelized population, and 



3n fye VOovlb, 



yet have about one hundred at home to sup- 
port every foreign missionary. It is not even 
a question of adequate means to support a 
great army of missionaries, for the aggregate 
wealth which is at the disposal of disciples is 
so great that one-tenth of it would amply 
suffice to sustain half a million workmen in 
the foreign field and to supply all the needed 
adjuncts and accessories for mission work. 

What, then, is the hindrance ? We answer, 
unhesitatingly, that the Church of God is 
trifling with human souls and with her own 
duty. The hour has come for plainness of 
speech. It is no time to put a veil over the 
face or a gag into the mouth. Christian 
missions have never yet been taken up by 
the Reformed Church as an enterprise to be 
dared and done for God, like any other en- 
terprise, with promptness and resoluteness. 
Two texts of Scripture should be the motto 
of the present age : " Where the word of a 
King is, there is power." (Eccles. viii:4.) 
And, " The King's business required haste." 
(i Sam. xxi:8). The command of the 
King of Kings is before us: that implies 
Divine authority back of our commission, 
and hence guarantees Divine ability to ful- 



8 £ije Greatest £Dor£ 

fill it. And whatever is the King's business, 
it demands implicit and immediate atten- 
tion. To submit to His authority, to be- 
lieve in the ability divinely assured, to at- 
tempt great things for God and expect great 
things from God — would insure an era of 
missions so far eclipsing all hitherto done or 
attempted, that the present activity of the 
Church would be seen to be as the winking 
of an eye or the movement of the little fin- 
ger, in comparison to the energetic action of 
the whole body in a race for a prize. 

What is needed in order to get this en- 
terprise of world-wide evangelization clearly 
before the church of God and to get dis- 
ciples fully engaged in this greatest work in 
the world? 

We answer, comprehensively, We must 
push for the Regions Beyond. 

The old Greeks were a worldly-wise peo- 
ple. In the Olympic games they showed 
their sagacity. Three pillars stood in the 
ancient stadium — respectively at the starting 
point, midway, and at the goal or turning 
point. On the first was inscribed a Greek 
word, whose force was, "Show yourself a 
man ! " " Do your best ! " On the last was 



3n tfye VOotlb. 9 

a word which might be rendered, "Stop 
here!" "Arrest your steps!" But, on that 
midway pillar was the imperative, " Speed 
youT "Make haste!" 

How much philosophy there was in that I 
No risk was greater than the risk of over- 
confidence when success was but half at- 
tained. A racer, who at first outran the 
others, and, at the middle of the course, 
found himself ahead, would be tempted to 
relax his efforts ; and so some other athlete, 
who had reserved his strength for the su- 
preme effort at the end of the race, would 
pass him by and get first to the goal. 

Paul was a trained athlete in the spiritual 
sphere ; and the law of his life was, " forget- 
ting those things which are behind and 
reaching forth unto those things which are 
before, I press toward the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ." 
Spinoza wisely said that there is no more 
fatal foe to all progress than self-conceit 
and the laziness which self-conceit begets. 
To think and feel that we have already at- 
tained or are already perfect, is the narcotic 
that brings on the sleep of the sluggard and 
the slothful. 



10 £fye ©reatest TDot% 

The motto of the great apostle of the Gen- 
tiles was, THE REGIONS BEYOND. He 
would be satisfied with no other man's 
method of measurement, with no narrow 
circumference of present attainment. He 
yearned to evangelize — to preach the Gospel 
in the Regions Beyond, and not to boast in 
another man's canon or measure as to terri- 
tory already embraced in the scheme of labor. 

That motto of Paul is the true watchword 
of the Church in this new age of missions. 
After all the work of a century, we have only 
just begun ; we cannot claim even to have 
reached the midway pillar; and God says, 
" Speed ye! Make Haste ! Forget the things 
behind and push for the Regions Beyond. " 
And this will we do, by the grace of God ! 

This grand motto suggests various impor- 
tant applications : 

i. The Regions Beyond, in the literal 
sense, of territory thus far unclaimed and 
unoccupied for Christ, 

If this great work of evangelizing the 
world is ever to be done, we must penetrate 
the deceptive halo of mere enthusiasm, and 
come to the bare, hard facts of a world's des- 
titution and degradation. Zeal is good, but 



yx tye XDotlb. 11 



zeal according to knowledge is better. To 
know the facts is to be oppressed with a 
great burden for souls. To judge from what 
is sometimes said or written on missions, one 
would suppose that the work, not only of 
evangelization but of conversion, is going on 
so rapidly, that one might wake any morning 
and find that the whole world had been 
brought to Christ. 

Let us get past and behind this rose-colored 
cloud, and look at those great bald facts, that, 
like those stony shafts of eternity, the crags 
of the mountains, lift their awful forms before 
us. 1,500,000,000 human beings — enough, if 
they were moving, single file, past a given 
point, one every second, to consume fifty 
years, day and night, in passing — are now 
living on the earth, and going down to the 
grave at the rate of more than one every 
second! Death, three times every century, 
is sweeping the entire population of the 
globe into eternity, like chaff from a thresh- 
ing-floor, to make room for a new genera- 
tion ! And this process has been going on 
for nineteen centuries, uninterruptedly, so 
that, since Christ was born, nearly sixty gen- 
erations have lived and died, most of whose 



12 Cfje Greatest tDor£ 

countless millions never heard of Him ! 
What if all that host might be supposed to 
move in procession at the same rate we have 
already imagined ! It would take over a 
thousand years! And, while we are talking 
about evangelizing the world, and some en- 
thusiasts are prophesying its speedy conver- 
sion, is it not true that there are to-day more 
unsaved souls in the human family than 
there were last century, or even last year ? 
With all our missionary effort, is not the 
world's population advancing faster than the 
churches of Christ are gathering converts ? 

Surely, it is time the church should fully 
awake to her responsibility. We act as though 
we had ages before us in which to preach, and 
the unsaved had ages before them in which 
to be reached, whereas our term of service 
and their term of life must very soon expire. 

The China Inland Mission found the germ 
of its being in the fact that, in Inland China 
alone, there were eleven great . populous 
provinces where as yet no missionary had 
gone to reside ; and, in ten of the eleven, mis- 
sionaries are now permanently working. Let 
the church not shrink from facing the facts; 
the destitution still unreached is appalling. 



3n tye IDorifc 13 

What are 800 missionaries in China among 
380,000,000 of souls? One missionary to 
half a million ! About the same proportion 
of missionaries among the 250,000,000 or 
300,000,000 of India, one to about 400,000! 
In Siam, with from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000, 
about a score of men and women, laboring 
among the native Siamese and Laos people, 
every male missionary having an average 
parish of a million souls, and cities with a 
population of 200,000 having not even a 
Bible-reader or native teacher ! And these 
are but a few examples of the general desti- 
tution! 

Consider Africa's need ! How little is it 
understood. Even missionary journals give 
currency to the misleading statement that 
the Dark Continent is " tolerably well sup- 
plied with missionaries, as thirty-five mis- 
sionary societies are now at work there." If 
you go across Liberia and down the eastern 
slope of the Kong Mountains, through the 
three Soudans, of the Niger, Lake Tchad 
and the Nile, 3,000 miles to the Red Sea; 
and if, 400 miles north and south of your 
line of travel you could survey the land, you 
would find 90,000,000 of people with scarce 



14 €f?e (greatest H)or£ 

one missionary ! And, farther south, in the 
Congo Free State, you might travel from 
Equatorville, east to the Great Lake stations, 
and find there another territory 1,000 miles 
long by half as many broad, whose 40,000,000 
of people, when Stanley passed through 
Uganda, had not yet seen a missionary! 
Doubtless Africa has to-day at least 
200,000,000 people who never saw a Bible or 
heard the first proclamation of the good 
news. And yet Africa is "tolerably well 
supplied with missionaries !" 

Is it not manifest that we must get be- 
yond and behind all this illusive glamor 
of ignorance and imagination? Yes, even 
beyond evanescent touches of sympathy and 
passage of resolutions, and do something for 
souls that are dying without Christ. 

In all the world we have about six thousand 
missionaries, representing from 30,000,000 
to 40,000,000 Protestant church members — 
one for every five or six thousand ! Where- 
as, if Protestant churches gave out of their 
membership only one in three hundred, it 
would put 100,000 missionaries in the field, 
exclusive of the native helpers, who have for 
the last half century outnumbered fourfold 



3n tye tDorlb. 15 

or fivefold the missionaries from Christian 
lands. These are, doubtless, familiar facts ; 
but Sydney Smith said that for purposes of 
impression repetition is the only figure of 
speech worth a farthing. These facts must be 
beaten in by repeated blows. We must not 
only strike while the iron is hot, but make it 
hot by striking. Never will the people of God 
take up the work of missions as they ought, 
until they both understand and feel the 
emergency and extremity of a dying world 
and their own opportunity and obligation 
and ability with reference to it. 

As to opportunity, there was never any 
such before. We live in days more augustly 
awful than any in previous history. It is 
probably a grander privilege to live in this 
present year, than to have lived when Christ 
walked the earth. Grand as it would have 
been to see the Lord in the flesh and to be 
closely associated with Him, then, this day 
of grace offers us opportunities of service 
and privileges of fellowship which, in their 
way, are even more transcendent. 

The Regions Beyond, of the whole world, 
now lie open before the children of God. 
Fifty years ago the burden of public and 



16 tCfye Greatest tDor^ 

united prayer for missions was that God 
would open the doors of the nations to the 
preaching of the Gospel. In those days 
Japan was like a vessel which for two centu- 
ries had been hermetically sealed; China was 
the walled kingdom, fifteen hundred miles of 
solid barrier shutting out "the foreign devils"; 
India was in the selfish clutch of the East In- 
dia Company; the islands of the sea were 
held by cannibal savages, and Africa was not 
even explored. A hundred years ago it 
seemed as though there was no chance of 
reaching the vast bulk of the race with the 
Gospel. A great encircling wall of idolatry, 
cemented with superstition and prejudice, 
surrounded the nations, with here and there 
a solitary breach; now, that whole wall is 
down, only here aJnd there a fragment remain- 
ing to oppose our advance. Let those who 
see no God in history tell us how changes so 
stupendous have been brought about inside 
of one century. No human being, no com- 
bination of human elements, could ever 
have done this. But "one day is with 
the Lord as a thousand years," and there 
have been single historic "days" in this 
period, in which He has wrought the work 



3n tye VOovlb. 17 

that ordinarily would have taken a millen- 
nium. 

That one year, 1858, may be selected as the 
annus mirabilis of modern missions. During 
that one year doors were opened giving ac- 
cess to one thousand millions of the human 
race. In that year, 1858, Great Britain, after 
two hundred years of exclusion, made her 
treaty with Japan. In that same year China, 
by the treaty of Tientsin, threw open not 
only her ports, but her interior, and provided 
that any Chinese subject might embrace the 
Christian faith without molestation or perse- 
cution. In that same year India was trans- 
ferred from the sordid East India Company 
to the British crown, and Victoria became 
Empress of the Indies; and Mrs. Elizabeth 
Sale, of Helensburgh, Scotland, successfully 
penetrated the zenanas of Hindustan, and led 
the way in woman's work for woman ! In 
that same year the revolutionary changes in 
Papal Europe laid the basis of Free Italy. 
In that same year David Livingstone sailed 
a second time for South Africa to complete 
the exploration of his pioneer path for mis- 
sionaries. In that same year Benito Juarez, 
in Mexico, overthrew the monastic system, 



18 £fye ©reatest XDor£ 

confiscated the estates and revenues of the 
Papal Church, and opened the way for Pro- 
testant missionaries to enter Central America! 

Was there ever another such year as 1858? 
Within less than a twelve-month doors of ap- 
proach were opened to' from thirty to forty 
millions in Japan, three hundred to four hun- 
dred millions in China, two hundred and fifty 
to three hundred millions more in India, in- 
cluding all her millions of women and girls, 
and to from two hundred and fifty to three 
hundred millions more in Africa, besides the 
hosts in Papal Italy and Mexico! When 
Paul and Barnabas came back to Antioch 
from their first mission tour, "they gathered 
the Church together and rehearsed all that 
God had done with them, and how he had 
opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.'* 
But did God ever open doors of access in 
Apostolic times with such amazing rapidity 
and on such a scale of grandeur as in your 
day and mine ? Who shall dare say that the 
days of supernatural working are past, when 
such miracles of Providence are performed 
before our very eyes ! 

The apathy and lethargy of the Church of 
Jesus Christ are alarming, for they suggest a 



3n fye VOoxlb. 19 

deadening of sensibility. We are like those 
that walk amid a blare and glare and flare, 
and whose eyes and ears are dazed and 
dulled by the glory of the scenes in the midst 
of which they are moving. That year, 1858, 
was not the only wonderful year in modern 
missionary history. In 1878, there was such 
a mighty movement of God's grace in India 
that sixty thousand people turned from idols 
in Tinnevelly and the Telugu country within 
six months f And it was in that same year 
that some twenty persons gave upwards of 
$4,000,000 to missions, as though God would 
show what on the one hand His grace could 
do among the heathen, and, on the other 
hand, among disciples in prompting a higher 
Christian liberality. 

The Regions Beyond, thus marvelously 
opened to the Church, are a perpetual chal- 
lenge to us to occupy till He comes. We 
need to get down on our faces before God 
for a greater Pentecostal baptism than the 
Church has ever yet known. All our efforts 
lack unity and harmony and business meth- 
ods. On some mission fields a score of differ- 
ent denominations will sometimes be found, 
working side by side, in a comparatively small 



20 €f>e (greatest IDorfc 

district, while in the Regions Beyond mil- 
lions are without a single missionary. And 
our home fields are often overstocked in com- 
parison. When in Scotland, on my mission 
tour, I found in one village, of perhaps 1,200 
people, five fine church buildings with as 
many educated pastors; the entire church- 
going population could have been accommo- 
dated in one of those buildings and cared 
for by one of those ministers, while the other 
four preachers, with the money that the other 
buildings cost, might have been evangelizing 
the interior of China, India or Africa, where 
each man might have a parish of from one 
million to ten million souls ! There is some- 
thing wrong in the Christian Church when 
denominational zeal outstrips that nobler zeal 
for the evangelization of the vast multitudes 
that are absolutely uncared for. It would 
seem that something is wrong, even in the 
basis of our missionary work, when the Church 
of God can calmly look on eight hundred 
millions of human beings that, even yet, after 
nineteen centuries, have not so much as 
heard whether there be a Christ or no ! 

When Rev. Geo. W. Chamberlain first 
went to Brazil, he found 10,000,000 of people 



3n tye UDotlb. 21 

in a nominally Papal land, who scarcely knew 
what a Bible was. One old patriarch of four- 
score years, to whom he gave a Portuguese 
New Testament, and explained salvation by 
faith, said to him: " Young man, this is 
what I, have long been waiting to hear. But 
where was your father when my father was 
alive that he never came to tell my father 
how to be saved ?" Some such question as 
that we must all answer, if not before we die, 
at the judgment seat of Christ. 

These Regions Beyond — this territory un- 
claimed and unoccupied for Christ — should 
at once be possessed. Christ distinctly out- 
lined for His Church her missionary policy : 
it is not concentration but diffusion. We can- 
not too often ring out this truth. Some have 
urged the American Board to concentrate its 
forces largely upon Turkey, and then, when 
Turkey is thoroughly evangelized, it will, they 
say, furnish evangelists for the Regions Be- 
yond. A similar policy has been urged upon 
the Presbyterian Board in New York as to 
Japan, and the Church Missionary Society as 
to India. The argument is that our forces 
should be massed upon a limited field, till it is 
thoroughly Christianized, and then we should 



22 £fye (greatest H)or£ 

make the newly converted people an evangel- 
izing force to push on to the farthermost 
limits of the earth. 

This looks well and sounds well at first 
suggestion ; but is it scriptural ? Our Mas- 
ter made no such discrimination. " Go ye in- 
to all the world," " unto the uttermost parts 
of the earth," and " make disciples of all na- 
tions," and "preach the Gospel to every 
creature." Those are our marching orders. 
The policy of concentration more or less 
limits the area of the w r ork of the Church. 
To follow such a policy is not to go into the 
Regions Beyond. We are tempted to choose 
fields comparatively near, attractive, promis- 
ing; fields offering prospect of large and 
quick harvests ; and thus tp leave the more 
distant, destitute, degraded races of mankind 
to utter neglect. While we are concentrat- 
ing on Turkey, Japan or India, what is to 
become of the millions of mankind in other 
regions, who have only one lifetime in which 
to hear the Gospel ? 

Again we would peal out in the dull ears 
of a sluggish Church the signal of opportu- 
nity and obligation ! We are to take what- 
ever men and women we can get, and what- 



3n tfc VDovlb. 23 

ever money and other means we can gather, 
and do just as our Master bade us — go 
everyv/here and to every creature with the 
Gospel, and do it at once. And when the 
Church of God will do her simple duty with 
faith in her Lord, the miracle of the loaves 
and fishes will be repeated on a larger scale 
in human history. The small provision, 
which seems nothing amid such a vast mul- 
titude of hungry souls, will, when brought to 
the Master and used along the lines of His 
command, again illustrate the miraculous 
mathematics of God. As we substract from 
our supply, He will add to our resources. 
As we divide, He will multiply ; and He will 
increase for distribution what we decrease 
by distribution. 

We write it solemnly and with profound 
conviction and deep emotion : Christ waits to 
see the travail of faith in the souls of His 
people, before He can see the travail of His 
own soul in the redemption of the race ! 
Never will that largest and last blessing 
come to our mission work, until we empha- 
size evangelization for which we are re- 
sponsible, rather than conversion for which 
we are not responsible; until we abandon 



24 0?e (greatest tDor£ 

our worldly-wise centralization and concen- 
tration and adopt the divine policy of uni- 
versal extension and diffusion, going with 
all speed even to the uttermost parts of the 
earth and bearing among all nations our wit- 
ness to our Lord and His cross. From His 
cradle to His tomb, and from His sermon on 
the Galilean Mount, to His last commission, 
pronounced perhaps upon the same Mount, 
we seem to see but one commanding signal : 
it is a Divine Hand pointing 

|^TO THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

2. Beside the literal ground, unoccupied 
for Christ, there is the unclaimed, untrodden, 
territory of Divine promises. What did God 
say to Joshua ? " Every place that the sole of 
your foot shall tread upon, that have I given 
unto you" (Joshua i:3), and then He draws 
the outlines of the Land of Promise — all 
theirs, on one condition : that they shall 
march through the length and breadth of it, 
and measure it off by their own feet. They 
never did that to more than one-third of the 
property, and consequently they never had 
more than one-third ; they had just what 
they measured off, and no more. If we turn 
now to the New Testament, in the Second 



3n tt>e IDorlb. 25 



Epistle of Peter we read about that other 
" Land of Promise " that is opened up to us ; 
"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great 
and precious promises, that by these ye might 
be partakers of the Divine nature, having es- 
caped the corruption that is in the world 
through lust." Mark the close analogy be- 
tween those two passages. Here is God's 
true Land of Promise, "exceeding great," 
" exceeding precious ;" and it is God's will 
that we should, as it were, measure off that 
territory by the feet of obedient faith and 
believing obedience, thus claiming and ap- 
propriating it for our own, becoming partak- 
ers off the Divine nature, and escaping that 
corruption which is in the world through 
lust, and which was typified by the Canaan- 
ites that had to be expelled before the Land 
of Promise could be possessed. 

Let us look at some of these promises. 
How marvelous they are ! How many of 
us have ever even imagined the wealth and the 
extent of that land ? And how many of us 
have ever taken possession of the promises of 
God in the Name of Jesus Christ? Here is 
a magnificent territory for faith to lay hold 
on and march through the length and 



26 0?e (greatest H)or£ 

breadth of, and faith has never yet done it. 
The faith of the Church has, thus far, taken 
possession only of a very small portion of 
this exceeding great and precious land, and 
the rest lies in " the regions beyond," of un- 
claimed, unappropriated blessing. 

We are too often limited by sight, which 
makes a great deal of the visible and temporal; 
and unbelieving disciples prefer that which 
is tangible and material to that which is un- 
seen and eternal. 

Sight emphasizes numbers. Hear what 
God says : " One of you shall chase a thou- 
sand, and two put ten thousand to flight." 
That is God's arithmetic. Twice one thousand 
is two thousand, in our mathematics, but in 
God's arithmetic twice one thousand is ten 
thousand. God is sublimely indifferent to 
numbers. It is not quantity but quality for 
which God cares ; He would rather have one 
consecrated man or woman than a thousand 
who are half hearted in His service ; and so 
He keeps sifting down, and down, and down, 
just as He did Gideon's great multitude, till 
He gets the choice " three hundred" with 
whom He can do mighty works. 

Sight emphasizes power. See how sub- 



3n tfc VOovlb. 27 

limely indifferent God is to power. While 
we are seeking the patronage of the great, or 
rich, or mighty, God is taking up the poor 
and the weak, and the despised and the 
base, and the things that are nothing, and 
with them bringing to nought the things 
that are something. 

Fellow-believers, we have to take posses- 
sion of this region of unclaimed promises ; 
and, inasmuch as we are applying this truth 
especially in the interest of missions, let us 
give our attention to a most important dis- 
tinction. Christ says, in Matthew : " Go 
ye . . . make disciples of all nations. All 
power is given unto Me in heaven and in 
earth. Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the age." That is His promise. 
Then, in Luke, He says: " Behold, I send 
the promise of My Father upon you, but 
tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be 
endued with power from on high." 

The Promise of Christ and the Prom- 
ise OF the Father are therefore not the 
same thing. Christ's promise is the promise 
of His personal presence, and of the exer- 
cise of His omnipotent power in behalf of 
His missionary band in removing external 



28 €f?e (greatest Z£or£ 

hindrances. The promise of the Father is the 
promise of a descending Holy Spirit, to break 
down internal barriers in the minds and 
the hearts of men, and to endue His own 
disciples with the wondrous unction from 
above. These are two of these promises 
— not to speak of any others. Think 
of them in their bearing on Christian mis- 
sions. 

When Joshua saw a man standing in the 
neighborhood of the city of Jericho, he said ; 
challenging him, "Art thou for us or against 
us?" This strange personage said, "Nay, 
but as Captain of the Host of the Lord am 
I now come ;"and Joshua perceived that He 
was the Angel of the Lord, and took off his 
own shoes in reverence, and waited for His 
commands ; and, in accordance with the pre- 
cise directions that He gave, Joshua moved 
round that city once a day for six days, and 
seven times on the seventh day ; and then, 
without a blow being struck, the walls fell, 
and they went into Jericho and took captive 
all that were within it. What is that but an 
historic allegory in the Old Testament, illus- 
trating the facts of the New? When the 
Acts of the Apostles opens, which corre- 






3n tfa VOovlb. 29 

sponds, in the New Testament, to the book 
of Joshua in the Old, we have there the 
hosts of God on the Day of Pentecost simply 
surrounding the fortress of Jewish prejudice, 
superstition, and alienation from God, and 
blowing the trumpet blast — the preaching of 
the Gospel— and on that day also without a 
carnal blow being struck, without any 
human philosophy to account for it, three 
thousand were pricked in their hearts, and 
said, " What shall we do?" and were taken 
captive for God. What is all this but the 
Captain of the Lord's Host, going before 
the missionary band, and repeating the mira- 
cle of Jericho? Walls fall at once that 
might have stood for a thousand years but 
for His presence. All human calculation is 
disappointed when the Captain of the Lord's 
Host appears on the scene. 

The promise of the Holy Ghost is a 
further assurance of special grace bestowed 
from above on teachers and preachers ; and 
then also on those that hear the Word ; as, 
in the house of Cornelius, the Spirit of God 
became converting grace to the hearers, as 
He had been anointing grace to him who 
spoke the word. 



30 £fye (greatest H)or£ 

Look at this territory of promise. Sup- 
pose that the church should pass all that 
has been attained, overleap all barriers, dis- 
regard the measure of past human attain- 
ment, and march in faith over the length and 
breadth of these promises, claim the presence 
of the Captain of the Lord's host, claim His 
intervention, the fulfillment of His word, 
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the age," claim the prostration of 
barriers that no man could overthrow with- 
out the power of His presence and influence! 
Suppose, moreover, that the Christian Church 
should get down on her face before God to- 
day, and boldly pray the Captain of the 
Lord's host to remove the obstacles that 
prevent our going into Thibet, that has stood 
there on her heights, walled about by her 
mountains, and thus far defied even the Mora- 
vians to obtain access to the shrine of the 
grand Lama worship — what might we not see 
in this very year, if we believed that this Jeri- 
cho, that could not be taken by the power of 
man, can be taken by the simple fiat of the 
Captain of the Lord's Host ! 

Suppose that there was likewise this 
believing appropriation of the Promised 



3n fye VDovlb. 31 



Spirit in anointing power on teachers and 
preachers, and in converting power on audi- 
ences that hear the Word in the communi- 
ties in the midst of which these men are 
laboring, what new things might we see 1 It 
is very noticeable that Peter did not say, on 
the Day of Pentecost^ that this was the ful- 
fillment of what had been spoken by the 
prophet Joel. The more minutely we study 
the Book of God the more we shall believe 
in the inspiration of the very words of Holy 
Scripture. There is no mistaking the lan- 
guage which Peter uses here Instead of 
saying, "This is the fulfillment of what Joel 
said," he simply says, " This is that which 
was spoken by the prophet Joel." In other 
words, " This is not spirituous intoxication, 
but spiritual exhilaration. It is indeed new 
wine, but it is the new wine of the kingdom, 
even as Joel foretold." That first Pentecost 
was a foretaste; the fulfillment of Joel's words 
is yet to come. There is to be a greater Pen- 
tecost, to which that was only like the first 
few drops that indicate the mighty rain that is 
to come down on the mown grass and refresh 
the earth ; and we ought to pray to-day for, 
and claim from God, a Pentecost so much 



32 (Oje (greatest tDori? 

greater than the first Pentecost, that it should 
at last begin to fill up to the full the language 
that Joel uses in that remarkable prophecy. 

3. This suggests regions beyond even the 
promises that faith has not taken possession 
of — namely, the advanced territory that pre- 
vailing prayer is yet to tread. Faith and 
prayer are so intimately associated that we 
cannot speak of one without at least imply- 
ing the other. But let us mark that there 
are different levels of prayer. If we follow 
our blessed Lord, as He teaches His dis- 
ciples, we find that He goes from one rung 
in the ladder to another, and lifts them with 
Him, higher and higher, to a sublimer level 
of prayer. 

Our Lord's first lesson on prayer was, 
"Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye 
shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you." But then, as we go on in Matthew 
and come to chapters xvii and xxi, a new 
element is emphasized: "Whatsoever ye 
shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall re- 
ceive." Here is an advanced lesson : not 
simply asking, but asking in faith and receiv- 
ing according to faith. But, when we come 
to the Gospel of John, we read, in chap. 



3n «?e VOovlb. 33 

xvi, 23-26, the most marvelous words which 
our Lord ever spoke on prayer, in the New 
Testament : "Hitherto have ye asked nothing 
in My Name: ask, and ye shall receive, that 
your joy may be full. Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in My Name He will give it 
you." This is something beyond simple ask- 
ing; beyond even asking in faith. This is 
asking by virtue of, and because of our identi- 
fication with the Lord Jesus Christ. His 
Name is His person. To ask in His Name is 
therefore to ask by virtue of our identity 
with Him, our individuality being merged into 
His personality in the sight of God, so that God 
does not look on us as we are, in ourselves, 
but looks on us as we are in Jesus Christ. 
Here is a "region beyond," in the matter of 
prayer, of which one man or woman in a 
thousand has scarce dreamed. When any one 
presents a request in behalf of another, and in 
his name, it is really that other person who asks 
the favor; and, when I go to the Father in 
Jesus' Name — reverently let me say it — Christ 
is the suppliant rather than myself; and, be- 
cause the Father can deny the Son nothing 
that He wants, it is certain that what I ask 
in His Name I shall receive — nay, I have al- 



34 0?e Greatest VOot% 

ready received it ; and it is my privilege to 
believe that I have received that which I 
ask, so certain is the answer. 

Let us suppose that the Christian Church 
should get hold of this power of prayer, and 
get above the level of simply asking, or even 
of asking in faith, and realize her identity 
with her Lord and the privilege of praying 
in the Name of Jesus ; then, keeping in fel- 
lowship with Christ, nourishing and cherish- 
ing this daily walk with Him, and therefore 
having, within, the motions that His Spirit 
creates, the groanings unutterable awakened 
by the Holy Ghost — these, presented in the 
golden censer of Christ before the throne, 
would certainly be heard and heeded by the 
Father. And so without doubt the greatest 
need ol missions to-day is NEW PRAYER — 
prayer on the highest level of prayer. 

4. There is yet another " region beyond," 
that has not been taken possession of, and 
that is the region of sanctified giving. We 
are coming now to a very practical matter. 
There is a whole world of promise and of 
power to be taken possession of in the matter 
of consecrated money. The Church of God 
is doing nothing to-day in comparison to 



3n «?e XDoxlb. 35 

what might be done and ought to be done. 
We feel ashamed, however, to treat giving 
as a duty, because it grows on our convictions 
more and more that if we abide in Christ we 
shall lose sight of it as a duty, and think of it 
only as a transcendent privilege. There is 
something in love that takes off the asperities 
of duty. " I delight to do thy will, O my 
God." That is the atmosphere of service — 
not the law atmosphere — " I ought to do this 
thing" — but the love atmosphere, "My meat is 
to do the will of Him that sent me, and to 
finish His work." In this unclaimed and un- 
trodden region with regard to giving, there 
are three or four things to which it is well to 
call special attention. 

In the first place, individual giving is a 
region beyond, which is yet to be reached 
by the Church of God. " Let everyone of 
you lay him in store." God's principle is not 
that the rich should give only, nor that the 
poor should give only, but that rich and 
poor should alike give ; and every man, 
woman, and child thus have part in this con- 
secration of substance. 

Then we need systematic giving. "Upon 
the first day of the week let every one of you 



36 £fye Greatest IDori? 

lay by in store ; " at stated times, with regu- 
larity, as a matter of habit, so that, just as 
regularly as the week comes round, there 
should be an account with God that is audit- 
ed, corrected, adjusted, to see that there be 
no failure in this part of our holy living. 
Just as we are to bring a certain portion of 
our time and set it entirely apart to God, so 
we are to bring a certain portion of our sub- 
stance, statedly and habitually offering it to 
the Lord. 

Then there must be proportionate giving. 
We must give, first, according to our ability \ 
and, secondly, "as God hath prospered us" 
And this law of proportion must never be 
overlooked. One difficulty with the Church 
to-day is that, too often, we are calculating 
how little we can give to satisfy the claims of 
conscience, whereas we ought to ask, " How 
much can I give to God, and how little can I 
reserve for myself, and yet satisfy my abso- 
lute necessities, my own reasonable wants ?" 
We ought thus to turn the rule of our giving 
entirely round, and give to the Lord the first 
portion, not the last — give to the Lord the 
largest portion, not the least. 

Then there ought to be self-denying giving, 



3n «>e VOotlb. 37 

which lies still farther beyond in this untrod- 
den territory* I knew a woman who went 
round in a church to get small offerings from 
the women of the congregation for foreign 
missions, and her uniform plea was, " You can 
give this, and you will not feel it a bit." That 
was the most damaging recommendation. 
Here is one grand deficiency in our offerings : 
we give and we do not feel it ; neither does 
the world feel it very much! Nor can we 
conceive how God can take much pleasure in 
a gift that costs us nothing; and let us pray 
God never to let us use such an argument as 
that, Rather let us give until we do feel it. 

Much is said from time to time about the 
"generous giving " of disciples. There are 
thirty or forty millions of Protestant Church- 
members to-day, and twelve millions of dollars 
is the utmost aggregate sum that is given to 
foreign missions by these Christians ; where- 
as, if every one of them gave one cent a day, it 
would amount to over one hundred millions, 
and if every one of them gave three cents a 
day, it would yield over three hundred and 
twenty-five millions a year ! There is some- 
thing wrong when, in the coffers of American 
and British Christians, there lie twenty-five 



38 0>e greatest tDor£ 

thousand millions of dollars, and God cannot 
get for the whole work of foreign evangeliza- 
tion more than twelve millions of that im- 
mense sum ! 

At the same time, individual examples of 
giving show us what is possible. There was 
Sarah Hosmer, of Lowell, Mass., a poor wo- 
man living in an attic, and working with 
her needle. She saved, on six different 
occasions, fifty dollars, and sent it to educate 
a native preacher in Oriental countries ; and, 
when she was borne to her rest, six men were 
preaching in foreign lands, whom she had 
helped into the ministry. 

Travelers in Scotland, pass by the estates 
of Airthrie, formerly owned by Robert Hal- 
dane, in the neighborhood of the Bridge of 
Allan ; and one feels a degree of reverence 
that inclines him to take off his shoes, for it 
seems that he is standing on holy ground. 
The fragrance of the act of that godly man 
who sold those estates, and offered the $175,- 
OOO that they yielded, to establish in Benares, 
the center of Hindu idolatry, a mission for 
the Lord Jesus Christ, is still shed abroad all 
through that country, and people pass those 
estates not without a reverent thought of 



3n tf?e UDovlb. 39 



Robert Haldane, and a grateful recognition 
of the power of a consecrated life. 

Then, in Alloa, when the writer of these 
lines was delivering the closing words of one of 
his addresses, he saw an old man there, lean- 
ing on his staff. He was nearly ninety years 
of age, and the chairman whispered, " That 
is David Paton. He has given his entire 
fortune — $1,000,000 — to missions, and he is 
living now on a little annuity which has been 
reserved that he may not come to absolute 
want." And yet, when that man heard my 
plea for missions, he managed to get out of 
the little that was left him $1,250 more, which 
he gave the next day, and subsequently sent 
yet another $2,000. 

There was Mr. Hamilton, a mere clerk in a 
surveyor's office in Glasgow, and all the in- 
come that he had was perhaps $350 a year — 
yet he annually gave to the United Pres- 
byterian Church $100, or nearly one-third of 
his entire income. And when, in 1887, there 
was a special call made by the Synod for 
$100,000 for missions, that poor man furnished 
one-hundredth part of the amount. He sent 
$1,600, one-half of the savings that he had 
made all through his lifetime. And, after 



40 0?e Greatest ZDorfc 

his death, his cash account was found, with 
the Lord's offering indicated there, and it 
was discovered that he spent only one shil- 
ling a day on his own needs besides the three 
shillings a week for lodging — ten shillings 
sterling a week in all — that he might give 
the more to the cause of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

Well may we feel that we have never 
denied ourselves anything for our Master 
when we read the story of such a man as 
that, living seventy-one years with slender 
income, and in that frugal fashion, that he 
might be one of the noblest givers in all 
Scotland, giving unobtrusively and quietly 
"as to the Lord, and not unto men." 

God showed the church in that annus 
mirabilis, 1878, to which we have referred, 
what could be done by a few consecrated 
givers. In that one year there was given to 
the Lord, on the altar of missions, by less 
than twenty individuals in the United States 
and in Great Britain, nearly one million 
pounds sterling, or $5,000,000! Thus God 
who first shewed his people in 1858, what 
wonders He can do in opening the way before 
His Church, again in 1878, showed both 



3n ttje XDorlb. 41 



what wonders He can do in giving large 
harvests from the seed sown, and what other 
wonders He can do in moving His people to 
come forward, like Barnabas at Cyprus, to 
lay the proceeds of their estates on the altars 
of Christian missions. 

5. We notice one more region that lies be- 
yond — namely, the region of holy living. 
That is the most important region of all. We 
must not measure ourselves by ourselves, or 
compare ourselves among ourselves, or stop 
where others have stopped, or where we have 
now attained ; but we must go on, if this 
world is to be evangelized, to a life of which 
very few know much. We compress all that 
we would say on this point into one maxim : 
"A holy life is a life in a supernatural realm 
— a walk with God." That is strong language, 
but that of the New Testament is stronger: 
"He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and 
God in him." Notice the expression that 
Jude uses — " praying in the Holy Ghost " — 
as though the Holy Ghost were a divine at- 
mosphere or element in which the praying 
disciple moves, which he breathes, which ex- 
hilarates him, which nerves him to duty, 
which vitalizes him, which strengthens him ! 



42 (C^e Greatest H)or£ 

And that is exactly the truth. A man that 
is a truly holy man is breathing the Holy 
Ghost as a sacred atmosphere ; and that Spirit 
is the spirit of missions. 

The thing that, perhaps, more than any- 
thing else, has led the writer to devote him 
self to the advocacy of missions, has been 
that he has recognized in the working of 
missions the nearest approach to the repeti- 
tion of all the supernatural occurrences of 
the Old Testament and of the period of the 
Acts of the Apostles. There is the Pillar of 
cloud and fire, going before God's people, caus- 
ing Red Seas to present a passage on dry 
ground, causing fortress walls to fall instan- 
taneously without a blow being struck, caus- 
ing the enemy, like Amalek, to be defeated 
as long as the arm of faith and prayer is ex- 
tended. When Christ says, " I am with 
you," He means omnipotent power; He 
means guidance, guardianship, government. 
Jesus Christ is with us in every sense that is 
most precious, when we seek to proclaim the 
Gospel to a dying world. 

We must learn to look for DIVINE INTER- 
POSITION. In Psalm ii, the kings of the earth 
are represented as conspiring together to 



3n ti?e VOoxlb. 43 

break the bands of Jehovah, and cast away 
the cords of His dear Son. What does God 
say to them ? " Yet have I set My King 
upon My holy hill of Zion ; " and He 
says to His King, " Ask of Me, and I shall 
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance 
and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for thy possession/' That text has been 
preached from a great many times as a mis- 
sionary text, but it has been interpreted as 
though it referred to the conversion of the 
whole world. But the next verse adds: "Thou 
shalt break them with a rod of iron : thou 
shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's 
vessel." This Psalm is indeed for the en- 
couragement of the Church of God, but not 
in the direction of the harvests that are to 
come from the sowing. There are abundant 
such encouragements elsewhere in the word 
of God ; but here the encouragement given is 
that, although the kings of the earth conspire 
and rulers take counsel to obstruct the work 
of missions, to defeat the plans of the great 
King Himself, He who has even His enemies 
as His inheritance, and the hostile territories 
of conspiring kings with which to do as He 
wills, shall dash the foes of the faith in oieces 



44 {Cfye (greatest tDorij 

like a potters vessel, and break them with the 
iron rod of His just rule. 

Missionaries of the Cross have seen many 
such interpositions of God. We refer again 
to two, as examples of many. 

In Turkey, in 1839, at the crisis of missions, 
the Sultan Mahmoud said, " There shall not 
a representative of the Christian religion re- 
main in the empire." And Dr. Hamlin came 
into the house of Dr. Goodell, and said, 
" Doctor, it is all over with us — we shall have 
to leave ; the American Consul and British 
Ambassador both say that it is of no use to 
meet, with antagonism, this violent and vin- 
dictive monarch." Dr. Goodell heard the 
news with undisturbed serenity, and quietly 
said, " Dr. Hamlin, the Sultan of the Universe, 
in answer to prayer, can change that decree" 
And they gave themselves to prayer, and the 
next day the Sultan Mahmoud died, and the 
decree has never since been mentioned, save 
as a matter of history. There a ruler con- 
spired against the King of Zion to defeat the 
plan of evangelizing His empire, and to expel 
His missionaries; but He stretched forth His 
rod of iron and instantly dashed him "in 
pieces, like a potters vessel." 



3n t^e tDorlb. 45 

In Siam, in the crisis of missions, in 
185 1, when another hostile king would not 
even allow the missionaries to get premises 
in which to live, or ground upon which to 
build, and would scarcely suffer them to obtain 
a lodging ; and when they were only waiting 
for a vessel to bear them away from the 
harbor of Bangkok, believing that their work 
was all in vain ; meanwhile they called upon 
Almighty God to interpose, and again the 
King of Zion stretched forth His rod and 
smote that monarch, and broke him likewise 
"in pieces, like a potter's vessel." And when 
his corpse was borne to burial, the question 
came up, " Who is to be his successor ? " and 
again God was besought to interpose. The 
man that was selected was the only man in 
the empire that had ever been trained by a 
Christian missionary. Though not himself a 
Christian, in studying language and philos- 
ophy and history and political economy with 
that missionary, he had imbibed tolerant and 
catholic principles and impulses, and he in- 
augurated in the Empire of Siam the most 
aggressive and the most liberal policy in all 
Asia ; and his successor, Chulalangkorn, is to- 
day the. most enlightened sovereign on that 



46 (C^e Greatest VOotfy 

continent. He and his wife are nursing father 
and nursing mother of Christian missions. 
Only two years ago they made munificent 
presents to our American missionaries to en- 
large the borders of their hospital and dis- 
pensary work, as they have again done more 
recently. 

Verily, A NEW STANDARD OF HOLY LIVING 
IS NEEDED. These " regions beyond " must 
be entered. Faith must enter the unclaimed 
territory of promise. Prayer must enter the 
unclaimed territory of divine power in the 
divine presence. We must get a new stand- 
ard of giving, that shall be individual, that 
shall be systematic, that shall be proportion- 
ate, that shall be cheerful, and that shall be 
self-denying. And we must get a new 
standard of living, that shall dare to invade the 
supernatural, that shall walk with God, and 
dwell in God, and pray in the Holy Ghost, 
that shall recognize the word of our Master, 
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world," and the word of the Father 
that the Holy Ghost shall come down to 
anoint disciples, and bring the uncon- 
verted to the knowledge of Christ. Yes, we 
must enter this unclaimed and untrodden 



3n tf?e tDorfe. 47 

territory, and then it may be permitted to 
some of us to see the glorious day come, 
when the Gospel, having been preached as a 
witness among all nations, the King himself 
shall come in His beauty, and those that have 
looked long for Him, with fainting desire, 
shall be permitted to share in the glory of 
His enthronement and coronation ! 

Thus far we have looked at the regions 
beyond, which must be entered for our Lord. 
But, there are yet some other and kindred 
thoughts which demand our attention. And, 
out of all that claims treatment, we select but 
one, the BASIS FOR MISSIONARY WORK. 

How are the regions beyond to be entered 
and possessed for God ? We do not deny that 
the work is immense and the task gigantic. 
To reach eight hundred millions of unevan- 
gelized souls with the bread of life is an 
enterprise that will tax our utmost faith, 
patience, enterprise and endeavor. What basis 
is there for the prosecution of such a work? 

I. God has certainly supplied a material 
basis for this stupendous achievement. Three 
things amaze and overwhelm the thoughtful 
observer: First, this is the age of world-wide 
openings. From Japan, at the sunrise, across 



48 Ct?e Greatest VOot$ 

the whole track of the monarch of day to his 
sunset pavilion on Pacific shores, he looks 
down on scarcely one land that still shuts out 
the Gospel. Secondly, God has given us 
world-wide facilities. What implements and 
instruments ! The Marquis of Worcester 
called the sixteenth century " the century of 
inventions," and Dryden named the year 
1666 the annus mirabilis. But the nineteenth 
century might crowd the achievements of the 
sixteenth into a decade, and, as we have seen, 
the years 1858 and 1878 were years that were 
in themselves as wonderful as almost any 
century previous to the sixteenth. Imagina- 
tion can scarce paint any means of travel, 
transportation, communication and contact, 
which are not now supplied ; and another 
quarter of a century may see the human race 
navigating the air as they now do the waters, 
and telegraphing without wires, and driv- 
ing mail matter through pneumatic tubes. 
Again, this is the age of worldwide enterprises. 
Everything moves with a rapid foot, and 
time and space are annihilated. With a 
swiftness, credible only when witnessed, men 
push to the confines of the globe to find 
treasures or to bear inventions. The church 



3n tye VDotlb. 49 



of God alone moves slowly ! Kerosene lamps 
and sewing-machines, parlor organs and 
glass beads are carried ahead of the Bread of 
Life. 

Now what is the natural basis of a world's 
evangelization? What, humanly speaking, 
constitutes man's responsibility in this work? 
We answer again, Three factors enter into 
the problem — men, money, and methods. 
The gospel needs a voice ; a book will not do. 
Behind the Bible must be a believer, behind 
the Gospel a gospeller or herald. God wants 
witnesses who speak what they know. These 
the church must supply. At present the 
exact number of missionaries is stated as 
5,994. But for the native laborers who out- 
number ours almost six times (35,343) our 
work would almost come to a standstill, with 
one missionary on the average to 166,000 
unevangelized. The church of God should 
robe herself in sackcloth at the remembrance 
of the fact that in the nineteenth century it 
takes nearly 6,000 Protestant church mem- 
bers to supply one missionary! At the 
same rate of supply we should have had but 
a force of 8,000 to 10,000 to bring into the 
field in the late war of the rebellion ! We do 



50 £fye (greatest tDor^ 

nothing else with so little zeal, self-sacrifice 
and energy as we do the Lord's work ; and 
no fact is more humiliating! 

There is also in this missionary problem 
the factor of money — for there is a financial 
basis of evangelization. The whole church 
membership in Protestant churches of Amer- 
ica and Europe raise $11,429,588 a year — an 
average of less than thirty cents a member — 
less than one-tenth of a cent a day ! These 
are no new facts, but they need to be beaten 
in by repeated blows — like truths incul- 
cated — trodden in by the heel. 

Our superfluities and luxuries absolutely 
unnecessary, save as made so by a luxurious 
and extravagant taste, reach an aggregate 
which is at the lowest estimate at least $4,000,- 
000,000. Suppose that only one-tenth of 
these was sacrificed. We should have 400,- 
000,000 dollars at once for the Lord's work ! 
Our comforts and conveniences aggregate 
fully as much more. Suppose we should 
give one-twentieth of them to the Lord ; we 
should have an aggregate of $200,000,000 
more ; a total of $6oo,ooo»ooo. And yet 
we have not supposed our self-sacrifice to 
touch our necessities, but even these, accord- 



3tt t^e Wovlb. 51 

ingto John Howard's maxim, should yield no 
small percentage in view of the extremities 
of the poor and the lost. 

Consider what new power would accrue 
to missions if to-day self-sacrifice, even with- 
out touching our actual needs, should thus 
begin by a tithe of our luxuries and a half 
tithe of our conveniences ! Let us have a 
new Order of the Iron Cross, and lay our 
jewels on the altar of God, as those patriotic 
Germans laid them on the altar of their 
country in the Napoleonic wars ! 

Then there is the factor of method. We 
need a careful and systematic method for 
districting the field and distributing the 
force. We have so much ground to be cov- 
ered, and we have so much material of men 
and money to meet the need ; well, then, let 
us so map out the world field and so divide 
and distribute all available workmen and 
contributions, that no part of the world shall 
be unsupplied. If the workmen are scattered, 
better one than none; and better to supply 
the whole field inadequately than leave 
whole districts absolutely destitute. We 
must look on the world as our field, and see 
that however limited our available supply of 



52 £fy> ©reatest XDov^ 

men and money, our method is apostolic and 
leaves no part absolutely destitute. 

But we must emphasize that supernatural 
basis of missions, wherein the solution of this 
problem really lies. This work is God's work, 
and we are only co-operating with the Father, 
going into all the world as His ambassadors ; 
co-operating with the Son, in the cross-bear- 
ing of self-sacrifice for souls ; co-operating 
with the Spirit in witnessing to His power to 
save and sanctify. God's work may demand 
haste, but never hurry and worry. And be- 
cause it is His work, it can be done if done 
in His way and in His strength. If we do 
not believe this we may well give up all effort 
henceforth. The church will never do this 
work until, however complete our basis in 
men, money and methods, we rise to a 
higher reliance and dependence on the Prov- 
idence of God, on prayer in Jesus' name, and 
on the power of the Spirit. The natural 
basis is only efficient when beneath it lies 
the solid, immovable rock of Divine Power. 

i. The supernatural basis of missions is 
The Divine Command. The word of the King 
is the assurance of authority and ability: 
" Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it/' We 



3" tye TDotlb. 53 

have not bread enough for so great a multi- 
tude ; but He says, " Give ye them to eat," 
and our means are permitted to be inadequate 
because He intends to work a new " Miracle 
of the Loaves." We have not men enough 
to go into all the world ; but He says, " Preach 
the Gospel to every creature ;" and He al- 
lows the supply to be inadequate that in an- 
swer to prayer He may "thrust forth laborers 
into His harvest." We have but to go and do 
as He bids us, and we shall find God is with 
us, supplying all lack both of men and money. 
Our very deficiencies are a challenge/to faith. 
To find such a command in the Holy Scrip- 
tures is sufficient. No questions need be 
asked and no doubts should be entertained. 
God does not mock our helplessness by put- 
ting before us the impossible. He stands 
ready to become to us all-sufficiency. 

2. Again, the supernatural basis is found 
in the promised power of Christ. In mis- 
sions we bear our cross — not crosses — after 
Christ. We join Him in self-abnegation. 
We consent to die that others may live — to 
be buried as seed in the soil of society, that 
others may be garnered, a harvest for the 
kingdom. Now Christ is both the Captain 



54 £fje (greatest XDori? 

of the Lord's Host, on the battle-field, guid- 
ing the movements of his army ; and is King 
of Kings, on the throne, administering 
government. Hence come two grand con- 
fidences: first, that the battle is bound to 
issue in victory; and, secondly, that our work 
must be a success, because Omnipotence is 
on our side. To open shut doors we need 
only to appeal to Him ; to meet all threaten- 
ing dangers, we have only to rest in His 
power ; and, to secure all necessary workmen, 
money and means for His work, we have 
only to appeal in believing prayer to Him 
who will refuse us nothing which we ask in 
Jesus' name. 

3. Once more the supernatural basis is 
found in the Co-witness of the Holy Ghost. 
In the mouth of this Divine confirming wit- 
ness every word of ours shall be estab- 
lished. The conditions of spiritual bless- 
ing are plainly indicated in the word of 
God: 
r (a) Anointed Disciples. " Ye shall receive 
the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon 
you/' It is " not by might nor by power, but 
by the Spirit of the Lord." It is something 
more than human words and witness that 



3n tye ZDorlb. 55 

brings men to Christ, something that cannot 
be defined, but can only be felt. 

(b) Scattered Vessels. We are the chosen 
vessels, vehicles of conveyance. There 
is here a truth which few seem to have 
grasped. The Holy Ghost is represented 
as coming to, dwelling in, and working 
through, disciples, but never as sustaining 
either of these relations to ungodly souls, 
who cannot perceive, receive or know the 
Holy Ghost. It is God's plan that believers 
shall be everywhere scattered in order to 
provide avenues of spiritual communication. 
The Holy Spirit has never yet been known 
to come down upon, and work in, a commu- 
nity where there were no believers. In the 
entire history of missions, the intervention 
of some one or more believing disciples has 
been the condition of His outpouring. 
Hence, as water can be conveyed only in 
vessels or channels, the believer must become 
the means of communication, impression 
and salvation to unbelievers. Therefore, 
Christ waits to see of the travail of his soul, 
and the Spirit waits to pour out blessing, 
until the believing church scatters every- 
where the witnesses of the cross, who are to 



56 Cfye Greatest IDori? 

be the nuclei of all spiritual reformation. 
This thought is one of the most important 
in the whole range of Scriptural truth. The 
grand duty of the hour is, therefore, as 
plain as an unclouded sun at its zenith: 
faith in the duty and so the possibility of 
doing it ; energy of action, courageously 
and promptly doing the King's business; and 
prayer for power from above. Give us these, 
and before this generation passes away, the 
world shall hear the Gospel ! 

God makes special appeal to young men ! 
With many of us life's sun has passed the 
zenith and is moving toward its setting, and 
with not a few the sunset already reddens 
the sky. You, young men and women, 
have life before you. Your sun has yet to 
mount from dawn to zenith. In this age, 
on ages telling, when into every year is com- 
pressed the eventf ulness of a century you are 
to live. God is marching on, the signal 
guns are sounding ; the battle grows hot, and 
every hour is critical and pivotal. Who of 
you will fall into the ranks and take up the 
grand march ? The open door of the ages 
is before you, and the clock of the ages has 
already struck the golden hour of all history. 



3n ilje UOovlb. 57 



All along the lines let there be one simulta- 
neous advance — A GRAND CRUSADE FOR 
CHRIST ! So shall the church at last do this 

GREATEST WORK IN THE WORLD! 

To this argument and appeal we desire to 
add the full combined text of 

THE GREAT COMMISSION. 

The four Gospel narratives have, at the 
close of each, and the Acts of the Apostles, 
which has been well called the " Fifth Gospel," 
has, at its beginning, words which are intended 
to instruct and guide disciples as to the great 
mission and commission entrusted to the 
Church. Each differs from the other, yet 
each presents something essential to the full 
and complete knowledge of the Lord's will 
and our duty. And as in a composite photo- 
graph we get various facial forms and features 
blended in one portrait which combines in- 
dividual peculiarities in a collective result, so, 
if we carefully project these five forms of the 
commission upon one sensitive plate and get 
a composite picture, we shall see at a glance 
the mutual relations of each special word of 



58 £f?e (greatest VOot% 

instruction, and the completeness of the 
grand total. While we reverently seek to 
combine these five fragments, we do not mean 
to imply that they were all thus blended in 
our Lord's own teaching, nor to assume to 
settle either their logical or chronological 
order ; our aim is simply to present a sum- 
mary from which nothing shall be omitted 
which belongs to any one narrative, and to 
group together words of instruction or 
promise which seem by closer affinity to be- 
long together. The attempt so to arrange 
and combine has been attended with such 
profit to the writer that he hopes it may 
prove no less a blessing to the reader. The 
obvious parallelism of the thought we seek 
also to represent. 



I. 



Jesus came and spake unto them, saying: 

" Peace be unto you! " 

And, when He had so said, 

He shewed unto them His hands and His side. 

Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. 

Then said Jesus to them again : 

" Peace be unto you! " 



3n tt?e UDovlb. 59 



II. 

"All power is given unto Me 

In heaven and in earth. 
As My Father hath sent Me 

Even so send I you." 

III. 

Then opened He their understanding 

That they might understand the Scriptures; 

And said unto them, 

"Thus it is written, 

And thus it behooved Christ to suffer, 

And to rise from the dead the third day ; 

And that repentance and remission of sins 

Should be preached in His name 

Among all nations, 

Beginning at Jerusalem : 

And ye are witnesses of these things. 



IV. 



Go ye, therefore, into all the world, 

Make disciples of all nations, 

And preach the Gospel to every creature : 

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, 



60 £fye Greatest XDox^ 



And of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; 

Teaching them to observe all things 

Whatsoever I have commanded you : 

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; 

But he that believeth not shall be damned. 



And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you 

Depart not from Jerusalem 

But wait for the promise of the Father, 

Which ye have heard of Me. 

For John truly baptized with water, 

But ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost 

Not many days hence. 

Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem 

Until ye be endued with power from on high. 

Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost 

Coming upon you ; 

And ye shall be witnesses unto Me, 

Both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, 

And in Samaria 

And unto the uttermost parts of the earth." 

And He breathed on them, and saith unto them 

" Receive ye the Holy Ghost! " 



3rt tt?e TDovlb. 61 



VI. 



"And lo I am with you alway 

Even unto the end of age. 

And these signs shall follow them that believe: 

In My name shall they cast out demons; 

They shall speak with new tongues; 

They shall take up serpents; 

And if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt 

them; 
They shall lay hands on the sick 
And they shall recover." 

VII. 

So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, 

He led them out as far as to Bethany; 

And He lifted up His hands and blessed them, 

And it came to pass, while He blessed them, 

He was parted' from them; 

And while they beheld, He was taken up 

And a cloud received Him out of their sight. 

And He was carried up and received up into heaven; 

And they worshiped Him, 

And returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 

And were continually in the temple 

Praising and blessing God. 



62 (p>e Greatest VOot% in tf?e UOovlb. 



And they went forth and preached everywhere, 
The Lord working with them 

And confirming the word 
With signs following. Amen! 




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